Great Video! I did a double blind of both Early Times a month ago, and shockingly choose the new one. Given the hype of the older bottle, thought for sure I would have picked it.
Thank you for doing the research and clarifying the true difference between the plastic and metal caps. There are a lot of whiskey tubers that don’t bother with the research and just assume.
Early Times BiB is still my fav bourbon under $50. And hitter by all accounts. This is my “always gotta buy it when I see it” bottle. $26 for 1 liter. Bet.
Thanks for the detailed explanation on the differences. 3+ years ago, really enjoyed this and gifted a number of bottles that everyone loved. Haven't tried the new metal cap. CHEERS!!
The end-all-be-all breakdown we all wanted from people we all trust. I’m so grateful you all did this video. Excellent depth, research, and detail provided-not to mention the humility to admit that perhaps this could have swayed the brackets a bit. Cheers!
Loved the video, and as always, the video was full of information. And to get in the spirit, I watched with a pour of the new Early Times. My takeaway ..... it doesn't matter!!! The old is no longer available, and going forward the question is this: Does the new one fit your flavor profile and is it worth the price? My answer is hell yeah .... I'll be keeping it on my shelf. It's a delicious daily pour.
Nice review. I just visited KY and picked up 3 more bottles of the Early Times BIB with the black cap. Now that I have 10 of these bottles bunkered, I will let others know where they can still get these. United Liquors in Florence, KY still has about 30 cases of the black cap bottles. Unfortunately, they raised the price to 39.99 per bottle. I think 10 bottles should last me. I do still like the blue cap version, but prefer the black cap. 🥃
You all have fully redeemed yourselves since 2022 best of list. Excellent research and explanation of ET transition. Other people have attempted but you all stated facts and did a great job. Appreciate that effort. Well done.
ET bib. Always will be one of my top go-to pours just because of the flavor / price combo. I’ve had a couple of the BF, couple of the Saz. Really I can’t wait to see what Saz does with it. ……..maybe big plans in the works. Who knows but at $26-$29 around here it’s going to continue to be a top pour. Cheers!
Hey Chad & Sara. :) I'm from the Northwest and we had a great band back in the day that was actually the original Pearl Jam but the singer in those days was the late Mr. Andrew Wood. They were called Mother Love Bone and they had a beautiful song called Bone China. That song contains an awesome shout-out to Early Times whisky (or whiskey). This would be from the 90s. Check it out! And RIP Andrew Wood.
I'm just glad I have a few bottles of the older BIB in the stash. I always got a raisin / chewing tobacco note that brings back a lot of memories for me. The new stuff is good, not great, but its gonna be batch specific I'm sure.
OF1920 Yum! It's not noon yet but I had to go find my Old Times bottle. It's the new stuff of course and I found it just meh. It almost noses like a BT juice. Oh and it was $40 in Iowa. Cheers!
Bought a few bottles of the new one not long ago. I still have some pours of the old but I do enjoy the new. Worth the money for the price for sure. I do need to do a side by side here soon. Great video
Since Bottled in Bond products have to be from a specific season I wonder if there are variations just from the time it was made and spent in a barrel. Could you take a single distillery BIB from different years and find a difference. Like if you could find a 2 year Old Granddad BIB vs one that just rolled off the bottling line would they taste the same? Very interesting.
I’m looking forward to the promised Junkies/Stuff and Whiskey crossover on this, as they are the most notable champions I can recall for the opposite camps. I appreciate the first chunk of this video for easily doing the best job of refreshing folks of the BiB requirements….during the initial rush of videos, a lot of the conspiracy theories (and some to this day), throw the BiB requirements out the window.
Never had the privilege of trying the Brown-Forman Early Times and it’s still my jam! I would love to see a triple blind between Old Forester 100, Early Times BiB, and Coopers Craft 100! In my head they share some similarities but I’ve never had all of them at once to try lol. I just rotate once a bottle is finished.
Nice info. After your review I checked out my black plastic cap bottle of Early Times and found the numbers DSP-KY-354 and DSP-KY-414. I bought this about 2 years ago and have a couple of sips left. Then I checked out my bottle of 1897 BiB I bought at OF this year in May and found it had the same numbers: 354 & 414. Does this mean my $30 liter and my $50 fifth are the exact same? I wanted to share the last of my ET with a friend. Maybe do a blind with the OF 1897?
I drank Early Times back in the 80's when it had a. Yellow label and not B in B. Even with Sazarac buying the barrels, if it was dumped into containers, I can't see any possible way Saz. could duplicate the same profile as B F did. I have a blue cap bottle, it's OK, but I will wait for this "Transition Misinterpretation to calm down, then try it again.
ET BiB is my favorite “daily sipper”. You can’t beat the price point at around $22 for a liter. Another difference between the two is the water used to get the juice down to 100 proof. Saz is likely using different water than Brown-Forman used to cut the bourbon to the correct proof for a BiB.
You should compare ancient ancient age 10 star with blantons. Being the aame mash bill the age ia the only difference. I bet they are close. I think so.
Hopefully you guys didn't finish out that older bottle or have more of the older bottles so when the 2025 Early Times hits the shelves you can compare it then. Great video. Cheers.
Coopers Craft 100 is the same mashbill as OldFo and Woodford reserve - ET BiB has its own unique mash and yeast . It also has grooved staves to give it a different flavor profile. It was made to showcase the uniqueness of the Bf cooperage. Great bottle! But not the replacement.
Haven't been watching your channel for a long time, so I'm not sure if this is something you had been doing previously. But I couldn't help but wonder if a triangle (I saw this the first time on James Hoffmanns coffee channel) test wouldn't be a good way to go here. You wouldn't be able to smell/taste the same glass at the same time, but you would have a much clearer picture of whether you were able to single out the batch differences or not.
Wait, why are Sara’s glencairn labels’ color the opposite of Chad’s? (Sara’s A has a green label, Chad’s A has a red label; the B’s are also reversed.) What did I miss? I didn’t watch every second of the video, but this is confusing at best.
It's a definite possibility that the plastic storage and new vating/bottling could make a slight but noticeable difference. However, wouldn't the different batches of Early Times make a large difference as well. Especially the newer batches being nit only being different batches but bottling in a different process at the new location. Just thoughts.
You should do the new blind with a small group at the bourbon festival to expand the diversity of the voting! Perhaps even pair up with some other you tube channels members to participate?
One theory not discussed, BIB does not mean exactly 4 years - just at least 4 years. There are hundreds of reasons why the old stock and new stock could taste different. Micro climate events between the batches, Blender differences, If they received the whiskey in totes the totes may have impacted the whiskey (it happens), the totes can hold multiple barrels and the whiskey could have arrived in a semi-blended state with stock BF would have dumped into their normal Early Times budget bottle instead, and etc etc etc. The bottle I have is great. I don't have a black top to compare it against but it's one of the best sub $50 bottles on my shelf. That said... it will never be the same as the prior Early Times BIB since they have moved to a new distillery and warehouse. The still you use impacts the flavor of the whiskey. The warehouse orientation, elevation, and microclimate impacts the flavor of the whiskey. And most importantly... all batches (even if they hired the BF blender) have variation.
Every time it’s the old one. I’m tired of these other TH-camrs trying to pretend they are the same lol Even just logistically speaking, there is zero chance they possibly COULD ever taste the same.
Read through the comments and didn't see this addressed - how do eseither of them qualify as BiB given that they both have two distilleries right on their labels? Does it just have to be from one company that owns both distilleries? I really thought it had to come from the same plant, same season.
@@El_LocaLoca I’m not sure what you mean. I most definitely watched the entire video and am saying that they should absolutely go back and blind the new ET with the ER, the OGD114, and the 1792 Full proof, like they suggested at the end of the video.
I’ve never seen this or have I tried it. So if I was to get a new bottle I wouldn’t have know what the old bottle tastes like so it really doesn’t matter. Is the new bottle good that’s what is important for not if it doesn’t taste like the old bottle.
Good question. So I mix up the glasses, keeping the set of glasses together. Then Sara mixes up the order while I’m not looking, also keeping the set of glasses together. Hope that makes sense.
Or, maybe it is not so mysterious. They bought the old stock when they bought the label, including partially aged barrels. Brown-Forman warehouses are climate controlled, those of Sazerac are not. So another possibility is that this is a grand experiment on climate control in aging.
It can be different because someone is blending an unknown number of barrels, probably in the hundreds, to achieve a certain taste profile. Then those barrels are sold to another company and someone else has the job of blending those hundreds of barrels to achieve a taste profile that another company came up with. Not a super easy thing to do, even if you’re trained for it. That can account for the change.
I laugh at the people who purport to review "Brown-Forman Early Times BIB" vs. "Sazerac Early Times BIB" in 2023 and earlier. Uh, let's see... Sazerac purchased the Early Times brand in 2020. The requirement is that it be aged for at least 4 years. Hmmm... Could there possibly be a "Sazerac Early Times BIB" in 2023? I guess they would have had to get ready ahead of time? Or have a time machine?
Great Video! I did a double blind of both Early Times a month ago, and shockingly choose the new one. Given the hype of the older bottle, thought for sure I would have picked it.
Thank you for doing the research and clarifying the true difference between the plastic and metal caps. There are a lot of whiskey tubers that don’t bother with the research and just assume.
Early Times BiB is still my fav bourbon under $50. And hitter by all accounts. This is my “always gotta buy it when I see it” bottle. $26 for 1 liter. Bet.
Thanks for the detailed explanation on the differences. 3+ years ago, really enjoyed this and gifted a number of bottles that everyone loved. Haven't tried the new metal cap. CHEERS!!
The end-all-be-all breakdown we all wanted from people we all trust. I’m so grateful you all did this video. Excellent depth, research, and detail provided-not to mention the humility to admit that perhaps this could have swayed the brackets a bit. Cheers!
Loved the video, and as always, the video was full of information. And to get in the spirit, I watched with a pour of the new Early Times. My takeaway ..... it doesn't matter!!! The old is no longer available, and going forward the question is this: Does the new one fit your flavor profile and is it worth the price? My answer is hell yeah .... I'll be keeping it on my shelf. It's a delicious daily pour.
Nice review. I just visited KY and picked up 3 more bottles of the Early Times BIB with the black cap. Now that I have 10 of these bottles bunkered, I will let others know where they can still get these. United Liquors in Florence, KY still has about 30 cases of the black cap bottles. Unfortunately, they raised the price to 39.99 per bottle. I think 10 bottles should last me. I do still like the blue cap version, but prefer the black cap. 🥃
You all have fully redeemed yourselves since 2022 best of list. Excellent research and explanation of ET transition. Other people have attempted but you all stated facts and did a great job. Appreciate that effort. Well done.
Yes please redo the portion of the bracket with the new Early Times. I suspect it doesn’t get out of the first round. Cheers!
ET bib. Always will be one of my top go-to pours just because of the flavor / price combo. I’ve had a couple of the BF, couple of the Saz. Really I can’t wait to see what Saz does with it. ……..maybe big plans in the works. Who knows but at $26-$29 around here it’s going to continue to be a top pour. Cheers!
Hey Chad & Sara. :) I'm from the Northwest and we had a great band back in the day that was actually the original Pearl Jam but the singer in those days was the late Mr. Andrew Wood. They were called Mother Love Bone and they had a beautiful song called Bone China. That song contains an awesome shout-out to Early Times whisky (or whiskey). This would be from the 90s. Check it out! And RIP Andrew Wood.
I managed to snag a Saz version of ETBIB for $11. It’s tough to complain about anything at that price.
$11.99 each in a northern Tampa suburb for Sazerac version. Can't beat it!
….and you didn’t buy A CASE!?!?!? 🤦♂️
Yes, do over for that piece of the bracket!
I'm just glad I have a few bottles of the older BIB in the stash. I always got a raisin / chewing tobacco note that brings back a lot of memories for me. The new stuff is good, not great, but its gonna be batch specific I'm sure.
I watch these every time, even though I've never seen ET BiB
I enjoy the bourbon centrist episodes the most, and some of those other whiskies. Please keep them coming friends.
OF1920 Yum! It's not noon yet but I had to go find my Old Times bottle. It's the new stuff of course and I found it just meh. It almost noses like a BT juice. Oh and it was $40 in Iowa. Cheers!
I wish I could find this stuff at all in Maryland.
Bought a few bottles of the new one not long ago. I still have some pours of the old but I do enjoy the new. Worth the money for the price for sure. I do need to do a side by side here soon. Great video
Great comparison!
This is happening with everything. Try to find the prior bottle styles of everything to get the best tasting version.
Thank you both for the comparison video 🥃
Excellent idea as usual.
Thanks!
great video guys!
Yes please do another episode for these. If not a live then a flight fight of those 'bracket bourbons'.
Since Bottled in Bond products have to be from a specific season I wonder if there are variations just from the time it was made and spent in a barrel. Could you take a single distillery BIB from different years and find a difference. Like if you could find a 2 year Old Granddad BIB vs one that just rolled off the bottling line would they taste the same? Very interesting.
I’m looking forward to the promised Junkies/Stuff and Whiskey crossover on this, as they are the most notable champions I can recall for the opposite camps. I appreciate the first chunk of this video for easily doing the best job of refreshing folks of the BiB requirements….during the initial rush of videos, a lot of the conspiracy theories (and some to this day), throw the BiB requirements out the window.
We want to see it!
Never had the privilege of trying the Brown-Forman Early Times and it’s still my jam!
I would love to see a triple blind between Old Forester 100, Early Times BiB, and Coopers Craft 100! In my head they share some similarities but I’ve never had all of them at once to try lol. I just rotate once a bottle is finished.
Nice info. After your review I checked out my black plastic cap bottle of Early Times and found the numbers DSP-KY-354 and DSP-KY-414. I bought this about 2 years ago and have a couple of sips left. Then I checked out my bottle of 1897 BiB I bought at OF this year in May and found it had the same numbers: 354 & 414. Does this mean my $30 liter and my $50 fifth are the exact same? I wanted to share the last of my ET with a friend. Maybe do a blind with the OF 1897?
I drank Early Times back in the 80's when it had a. Yellow label and not B in B. Even with Sazarac buying the barrels, if it was dumped into containers, I can't see any possible way Saz. could duplicate the same profile as B F did. I have a blue cap bottle, it's OK, but I will wait for this "Transition Misinterpretation to calm down, then try it again.
Yes please redo the bracket with the “new” early times!!
ET BiB is my favorite “daily sipper”. You can’t beat the price point at around $22 for a liter.
Another difference between the two is the water used to get the juice down to 100 proof. Saz is likely using different water than Brown-Forman used to cut the bourbon to the correct proof for a BiB.
Nice, I hadn't considered the water.
You should compare ancient ancient age 10 star with blantons. Being the aame mash bill the age ia the only difference. I bet they are close. I think so.
Hopefully you guys didn't finish out that older bottle or have more of the older bottles so when the 2025 Early Times hits the shelves you can compare it then. Great video. Cheers.
Please try the black top vs coopers craft 100 that is supposed to be the replacement for the old early times Bib
Coopers Craft 100 is the same mashbill as OldFo and Woodford reserve - ET BiB has its own unique mash and yeast . It also has grooved staves to give it a different flavor profile. It was made to showcase the uniqueness of the Bf cooperage. Great bottle! But not the replacement.
I think the new one is still good but there is without a doubt a difference. I've done probably 5-6 blinds of it and I choose the old one every time.
Haven't been watching your channel for a long time, so I'm not sure if this is something you had been doing previously. But I couldn't help but wonder if a triangle (I saw this the first time on James Hoffmanns coffee channel) test wouldn't be a good way to go here. You wouldn't be able to smell/taste the same glass at the same time, but you would have a much clearer picture of whether you were able to single out the batch differences or not.
Can you post a link to the completed bracket please😊
Wait, why are Sara’s glencairn labels’ color the opposite of Chad’s? (Sara’s A has a green label, Chad’s A has a red label; the B’s are also reversed.) What did I miss? I didn’t watch every second of the video, but this is confusing at best.
i saw that same things, please explain!
Different colors, same letters it seems like.. they both looked at theirs at the end during the reveal
It's a definite possibility that the plastic storage and new vating/bottling could make a slight but noticeable difference. However, wouldn't the different batches of Early Times make a large difference as well. Especially the newer batches being nit only being different batches but bottling in a different process at the new location. Just thoughts.
You should do the new blind with a small group at the bourbon festival to expand the diversity of the voting! Perhaps even pair up with some other you tube channels members to participate?
One theory not discussed, BIB does not mean exactly 4 years - just at least 4 years. There are hundreds of reasons why the old stock and new stock could taste different. Micro climate events between the batches, Blender differences, If they received the whiskey in totes the totes may have impacted the whiskey (it happens), the totes can hold multiple barrels and the whiskey could have arrived in a semi-blended state with stock BF would have dumped into their normal Early Times budget bottle instead, and etc etc etc. The bottle I have is great. I don't have a black top to compare it against but it's one of the best sub $50 bottles on my shelf.
That said... it will never be the same as the prior Early Times BIB since they have moved to a new distillery and warehouse. The still you use impacts the flavor of the whiskey. The warehouse orientation, elevation, and microclimate impacts the flavor of the whiskey. And most importantly... all batches (even if they hired the BF blender) have variation.
Great vid.
Every time it’s the old one. I’m tired of these other TH-camrs trying to pretend they are the same lol
Even just logistically speaking, there is zero chance they possibly COULD ever taste the same.
Agreed
I can't find Early Times bottled in bond at all... 😢
Yes do it again!
Now I gotta go check my bottles again and see which ones I have. 🤦🏻♂️
Read through the comments and didn't see this addressed - how do eseither of them qualify as BiB given that they both have two distilleries right on their labels? Does it just have to be from one company that owns both distilleries? I really thought it had to come from the same plant, same season.
Yes please. Do a live with ET.
I like the new one. To each his own 🎉
Can we get the best and worst from the dilstary craft edition 🙏
Time to go back and blind the new ET with the bottles the old beat!
Didn’t watch the full video, eh?
@@El_LocaLoca I’m not sure what you mean. I most definitely watched the entire video and am saying that they should absolutely go back and blind the new ET with the ER, the OGD114, and the 1792 Full proof, like they suggested at the end of the video.
I’ve never seen this or have I tried it. So if I was to get a new bottle I wouldn’t have know what the old bottle tastes like so it really doesn’t matter. Is the new bottle good that’s what is important for not if it doesn’t taste like the old bottle.
can't even find the new bottle in Vegas !
they better get the old profile back down because I will never get it again until they get it right. thanks for warning me.
I have never seen early times BIB in South Florida. Old or new.
Wouldn’t it be so much easier if sazerac would just tell us directly? Come on sazerac, man up.
Those of us who desperately want to know are unfortunately in the minority, so they just don’t see it as a priority.
WHISKEY CHEERS😎
When do your lives?! I’d love to tune in
Every Sunday at 8:00pm EST
@@ItsBourbonNight I’ll try tuning in this weekend! I’ll be on vacation but there will be whiskey!
Damn everyone saying they fucked it up, I like the new shit tho…I gotta try to find the old now lol
I never see Early Times BiB, old or new, here in Maine. 😢
Could a casual whiskey enthusiast be able to tell the difference between these 2?
Not a hater question, but how is it blind if you both know that the glasses on the left are the same?
Good question. So I mix up the glasses, keeping the set of glasses together. Then Sara mixes up the order while I’m not looking, also keeping the set of glasses together. Hope that makes sense.
Are y'all drinking the same or are y'all not? Stickers are definitely opposite.
I had a challenging time deciding which bottle tastes the worst!
Or, maybe it is not so mysterious. They bought the old stock when they bought the label, including partially aged barrels. Brown-Forman warehouses are climate controlled, those of Sazerac are not. So another possibility is that this is a grand experiment on climate control in aging.
How can it be different ? 4 years old and the new can't even be ready before 2024... it can't be different until 4 years ....right ?
It can be different because someone is blending an unknown number of barrels, probably in the hundreds, to achieve a certain taste profile. Then those barrels are sold to another company and someone else has the job of blending those hundreds of barrels to achieve a taste profile that another company came up with. Not a super easy thing to do, even if you’re trained for it. That can account for the change.
I laugh at the people who purport to review "Brown-Forman Early Times BIB" vs. "Sazerac Early Times BIB" in 2023 and earlier. Uh, let's see... Sazerac purchased the Early Times brand in 2020. The requirement is that it be aged for at least 4 years. Hmmm... Could there possibly be a "Sazerac Early Times BIB" in 2023? I guess they would have had to get ready ahead of time? Or have a time machine?
2a bourbon for me. They donate to folds of honor and the Second Amendment Foundation.
Don't like it, either way